


to dance under sparkling lights

by skyparents



Series: debbie & tammy through the holidays [2]
Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, F/F, Neighbors, New Year's Eve, New Year's Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22095100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyparents/pseuds/skyparents
Summary: "you absolutely have a crush. on that chick across the street," danny shoots back, accusatory. which, of course, is enough to get tess framed in the doorway, all wide-eyed intrigue and questions, while danny alternates between listening and dissolving into laugher. "your tactic to impress a woman is putting up christmas lights?"or, debbie has never really been good at talking about her feelings. least of all when it comes to a time as crucial as the holidays.
Relationships: Debbie Ocean/Tammy
Series: debbie & tammy through the holidays [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1532198
Comments: 14
Kudos: 44





	to dance under sparkling lights

**Author's Note:**

> well, i missed thanksgiving because i forgot that americans (such as, you know, debbie and tammy) celebrate it in november, not october like canadians do? whoops. i've been having some muse-y issues and, well, other issues, so i didn't have this ready in time for christmas – but, hey, i added to it and now it's a combo holiday fic! it's not as strong as i'd like it to be, but it's done, and it's cute, and here we are.
> 
> this can be read as a stand-alone, but it does connect to my _debbie & tammy through the holidays_ series, and is officially part ii. you can read the first installation, halloween 2019, [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21253928). enjoy!

“Shit,” hisses Debbie as a cardboard box topples over. It’s filled with scarves – dozens of them, more than she could ever have comprehended her mother needing to own – and they spill gracefully out onto the dusty floor.

With impeccable timing as always, she can hear the back door open downstairs. “Deb?” calls her brother once the door has clicked firmly shut again. It seems as if the doors in this house like to remain closed, or maybe the Oceans were simply trained into the habit when they were very small. In the front hall, she thinks maybe he trips over the boxes she’s left strewn over the floor after she pulled them out of the closet; he grumbles and curses before calling out again. “What the hell’s going on around here, anyway? Where are you?”

“I can’t find the Christmas lights,” she answers, righting the box she’s knocked over and shoving scarves haphazardly back into it.

It doesn’t really resolve either of his questions, but he manages to follow her voice up into the rarely-used attic, his wife at his heels. “Is there a reason you’re unearthing a decade of dust up here?” he asks, zeroing in on Debbie where she’s pulling boxes down to examine their contents. She doesn’t put a single one back, instead just kicking them off to one side. The effect is a maze of cardboard around the towering dollhouse she hasn’t touched since she was maybe seven.

Debbie shoves another box aside and reaches for the closest one that she doesn’t  _ think _ she’s checked yet. “I can’t find the Christmas lights,” she repeats, as if the answer is obvious.

“You hate Christmas,” he objects, frowning. Gingerly, Tess begins to tug boxes towards herself and stack them neatly on top of one another. “You haven’t decorated the house even once since you got it. Why do you want to so badly now?”

“Just thought it would be nice,” says Debbie airily. And finally,  _ finally, _ she finds the Christmas lights, tangled in looping green strings inside a box that seems, if possible, even more dusty than the rest of them. “Yes!” She spins triumphantly, flashing a smile at the both of them. “Help me get this box out of here?”

She sits on the couch downstairs to work at untangling them, little by little. “So, why the sudden interest in putting up Christmas lights?” asks her sister-in-law from the kitchen, where she’s unloading groceries. They don’t live here – the house, admittedly too large and too empty, holds just one – but since even before their wedding, Tess has taken it upon herself to make sure that Debbie has enough food (“You can’t survive on microwave meals alone,” she’s huffed on more than one occasion, stuffing the crisper with vegetables). She seems to like taking care of Debbie in little ways like that. Bringing food to stock her kitchen, ensuring that she doesn’t cancel the maid service, providing her with far too many boxes of Halloween candy back in October when Debbie showed no signs of buying any on her own. Debbie protested at that last one – why even bother, when all the neighbours convince their children not to set foot on the property? – but it turns out it was useful, in the end.

She still hasn’t told Tess that, of course, doesn’t want it to go to her head. “No reason,” she replies absently. Catches movement in her peripheral vision and looks up to check the street outside. Maybe smiles softly when she spots Tammy’s car pulling into her driveway, three doors down and across the street. The blonde artfully balances groceries of her own in reusable fabric bags into her arms so she only has to make one trip into her house, her children rushing ahead of her to the door.

“Oh, my  _ God.” _ Danny, for his part, has been pacing back and forth from the kitchen to the living room, staring Debbie down each time he turns to face her. And now he’s drawn closer, leaning forward over the armrest of the couch to follow Debbie’s gaze. “You have a crush!”

“Do not.” She reacts too fast, and she knows it. She drops her gaze immediately back to the lights, knowing with absolute certainty that she won’t be able to keep even a little bit of composure if she can see the incredulous, bemused way her brother is looking at her.

“You  _ do,” _ he shoots back, accusatory. He may as well be pointing a finger at her, and while she’s not looking, she thinks maybe he is. “You  _ absolutely _ have a crush. On that chick across the street.” Which, of course, is enough to get Tess framed in the doorway, all wide-eyed intrigue and  _ questions,  _ a  _ lot _ of questions, even though Tammy has already disappeared into her house – while Danny alternates between listening and dissolving into laughter. “Your tactic to impress a woman is  _ putting up Christmas lights?” _

Debbie crosses her arms. “She likes Christmas.”

She allows them the bare minimum of information: That Tammy is her neighbour and has lived in that house for just about a year now, that they have only really known each other since Halloween when her children were the only ones to knock on Debbie’s door, that everyone else on the street has fed Tammy the same badly-painted stories about the Oceans but that she doesn’t seem to mind going against their advice. “We’re just friends,” she explains three different times throughout it all, which, while technically true, feels a little painful to say out loud.

The fact of the matter is that she has no idea at all whether her crush (it feels schoolgirl-silly, to refer to it that way, even in her head) is reciprocated; she knows that Tammy was married to a man, and she’s never mentioned being attracted to women. But there’s something so charming about Tammy and the ease with which she’s begun to insert herself into Debbie’s life and the way her whole face lights up when she smiles. Maybe Debbie wouldn’t mind so much, if her feelings turn out to be entirely one-sided. She’d like to just be  _ around _ Tammy, in whatever capacity she can be.

The Christmas lights don’t work when she plugs them in, which sends her brother into fits of laughter again. “I expected as much,” says Tess, twisting her lips thoughtfully as she observes, although she didn’t say a word earlier. “They’ve been sitting in that box for years and years. Even if they got used every year instead of gathering dust, they probably would have stopped working by now.”

She must feel a little bit bad, because the next day, she stops by with lunch in paper take-out bags and sets several new boxes of lights on the kitchen table. “She likes Christmas,” she shrugs when Debbie looks at her questioningly, gesturing vaguely in the direction of Tammy’s house. “I got you that Halloween candy. I feel like I’m basically your relationship fairy godmother now. You want a hand putting these up?”

“No, I’ve got it. Thanks, Tess.”

Only it turns out that putting up Christmas lights is actually a job for two people, maybe even more. She’s been struggling with it for what feels like an eternity when help arrives – embarrassingly in the form of Tammy herself and all three of her children. Tyler shows up first, seven years old and blinking up at Debbie from the bottom of the ladder. “Do you want some help with the lights?” he asks, and when Debbie shakes her head and turns him down, he only shrugs. “Too late. Mom and Derek are already getting out the ladder.”

Debbie twists (rather unsafely, though she doesn’t fall) to spot Tammy and her other son marching out of their own garage with a ladder, little Maggie bounding along somewhere in between them with one hand on the thing as if to insist that she can help, too. The four of them, all together, make it difficult to say no – so rather than attempting to surprise Tammy by putting Christmas lights up, she is sort of backed into allowing Tammy to do what ends up being the majority of the light-hanging.

“I can’t believe nobody else came,” murmurs Tammy later, in her kitchen, where the kids have essentially dragged Debbie back for hot chocolate. “Last year, all it took was me leaning a ladder up against the house and I had, like, four or five people practically race outside to help.”

This doesn’t really surprise Debbie. Her parents always considered themselves to be above most others around them; they simply didn’t care to be open enough that people might actually like them. The Oceans’ house was the first one built here, and Debbie has heard the story too many times to count – the bits and pieces of property sold off, the other homes cropping up on each one, and all of it made possible only by Debbie’s ancestors’ signatures. The whole neighbourhood around them now only exists because they said so, and the Oceans never made that a secret.

And then there are the decades upon decades of tradition woven in amongst the brick and wood. The house has stayed within the family for generations, passed down from one oldest son after another so it always remains in the possession of an  _ Ocean. _ The only reason that Debbie has it instead of Danny is that when it really came down to it, he didn’t want it; he and Tess had already found a place they loved more. She imagined a whole line of ancestors turning over in their graves when he pressed the keys into her hands.

She looks around Tammy’s house, seeking out Christmas decorations, and finds – surprisingly – a lot less than she expects. There is a tree, decorated almost sparingly, but no stockings hanging above the fireplace. There are lights up outside, but just a couple strings in a straight, precise line along the edge. She has left a tub in the front hall with more, entirely untouched. “Are you decorating more?” she asks delicately.

Tammy shrugs, averting her gaze carefully. “Not this year,” she admits, dropping her voice so low that Debbie leans forward just slightly on her elbows where they stand at the kitchen counter. “It’s their first Christmas with just their dad, so they’ve done some decorating with him the past couple weekends. It’s a little much to ask them to go all-out here, too, when they’re not even… going to be here.”

She doesn’t say it, not outright, but it hovers there in silence, anyway: What’s the point in decorating more here when it will be just her?

The unspoken question sticks in Debbie’s head for days, peeking out of the shadows at every quiet moment. It projects the image everywhere she looks: Tammy, alone for Christmas, in a too-big house with none of her children. She pictures the blonde sitting by herself all day long, no family dinner and no presents and no laughter. Just quiet, curled up on the couch with a book. It’s a familiar image, only Debbie has never tried to apply it to anyone but herself before. It was never tinged with sadness, when it was only about her.

As the sky darkens overhead on Christmas Day, she picks her way down the centre of the street and up the steps to Tammy’s front porch, where she knocks and waits. It seems to take forever for the light to flick on in the front hall, the other woman’s silhouette wavering on the other side of the glass for an extra moment, as if she’s not sure she wants to answer. “Debbie? What are you doing here?”

“I thought it might suck to be alone.”

Tammy squints at her. “You like to be alone,” she points out.

Debbie doesn’t miss a beat. “You don’t.”

Pulling the door wide open, Tammy lets her in.

She has been sitting on the couch with what looks like a mountain of soft throw blankets and a scented candle filling the room with peppermint and vanilla. Predictably, she moves a book to the coffee table and shifts some of the blankets to the wide armchair in the corner to make space for Debbie to sit down. “You didn’t have to come,” she says, but Debbie can hear the low notes of uncertain relief there.

They settle with one of the blankets over their legs, close enough that sometimes she can feel Tammy’s arm brush hers when they inhale at the same time. At some point, Tammy leans away, returning into Debbie’s orbit a moment later with the TV remote, and they wind up watching cartoon Christmas specials: Rudolph and Frosty and the Grinch. When the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes and breaks the measuring device, Tammy’s hand reaches for hers under the blanket. It’s soft and hesitant and careful, and Debbie’s heart seems to stutter for a moment, and their fingers lace smoothly together like they were meant to be there all along. The inside of Debbie’s left wrist presses against the inside of Tammy’s right when they both stop moving; can the blonde feel her pulse quickening?

The credits roll, and neither of them say a word about it. They just hold hands and flip through the channels to catch the last half of  _ Home Alone. _ Later, Tammy falls asleep with her head resting on Debbie’s shoulder. They don’t talk about that, either.

In the morning, Tammy makes waffles, insisting that Debbie stay to eat. “You should come to the New Year’s party,” she says over breakfast. It’s as if she has strategically waited for the perfect moment to say it, when Debbie’s mouth is full of food and she has to wait before she can answer; this way, she has extra time to present her argument. “It’s at Frank and Margaret’s house. At the end of the street, on the corner? Their oldest just started college. It’s for all the neighbours and, well, you’re a neighbour, right? Everyone brings food and –”

“I don’t want to go to a party,” Debbie cuts in, “and I doubt anyone else would want me there.”

“You don’t know that,” objects Tammy. Her eyes are shining as she pushes forward. “Maybe you could give them a chance. They only think the way they do because you haven’t given them a reason not to. If you just prove that you’re not like your parents,” and it all sounds like she  _ could _ be right, just maybe, but Debbie isn’t one to take a risk like that, and they both know it. She is comfortable in the isolation she has built up around herself and her house, Tammy and her children the only neighbours she has ever let in. Tammy goes quiet and looks at her thoughtfully. And then: “I’d want you there.”

It echoes in Debbie’s ears when she gets home.

She doesn’t go to the party, though. The week crawls by in that timeless blur that exists only between Christmas and New Year’s, and she only half-remembers it’s the last day of December when she spots everyone on her street walking over to the house on the corner. She can catch a glimpse of it from the upstairs guest bedroom’s window, all the lights turned on, the distinct sound of party chatter and background music filtering outside. Returning downstairs, Debbie listens to the near-silence of her house in comparison: Just the hum of the refrigerator and her own footsteps resounding off every hard surface.

She doesn’t really care for making a big deal out of starting a new year fresh. New beginnings are, in her opinion, overrated. In the end, New Year’s Eve is just another night. Maybe she will go to bed early. Is it pathetic, to not even make an effort to stay up until midnight? In a vain attempt to avoid the only people she talks to making fun of her later, she stays put, much like Tammy did for Christmas. Much like  _ she _ usually does for Christmas. She lets herself sink into the couch cushions with a book in hand, the television flickering dim blue light across the room, a single glass of wine on the end table.

She’s startled out of it, later, by a firm knock on the door. Like always, the sound echoes through the ground floor of the house, taking on a deeper and heavier quality. Debbie blinks up at the ceiling, realizing that she has slid down to lie nearly-flat, head propped at an odd angle, her thumb still uncomfortably marking her page. Her wine is unfinished, and her knit blanket has slipped mostly off onto the floor. She fell asleep, doesn’t know what time it is, what day – only that it’s dark and that the tile down the wide-sweeping front hall is too cold even for socked feet when she steps onto it.

Whoever is at the door knocks again, insistent, and she stops short in surprise when she cracks it open to find Tammy on the other side. Vaguely, she registers somewhere that she should not be altogether shocked, not really – Tammy Prescott is the only one who knocks at the front door. The only other people who come to see her let themselves in at the back. “Are you okay?” she asks, trying to assess Tammy’s facial expression.

“It’s three minutes to midnight,” says Tammy, and then glances at the silver-banded watch she wears. “Two and a half. I – were you asleep?”

Debbie doesn’t answer her directly, leaving the other woman to wait in uncertain silence. She’s trying to figure out what significance midnight has. “What are you doing here?”

“You didn’t come to the party.” Slowly, the pieces begin to fall into place, Debbie’s confusion beginning to dissipate. “I thought maybe you would, and then I’d talk to you there, but you didn’t come. Which is fine, really. Sort of a sign, right? But then I was standing there talking to Lindsay and Margaret, and all I could think about was that I… wanted to be with you, at midnight.”

_ It’s New Year’s Eve, _ the little voice in the back of Debbie’s head reminds her. A fact that doesn’t seem to have mattered last year or the year before that, but suddenly seems to be the only important thing in the world, the only thing that means anything.

Embarrassingly, all she can manage to say is, “Oh.”

Nodding, Tammy looks back at her, eyes wide and searching.. It’s dark here, the light from the hallway blocked mostly by the door. Debbie wants to pull it wider to cast the shadows away, wants to see her face when she keeps talking, but she’s afraid to make any sudden movements.

“Oh,” Tammy repeats back to her, a faint bemused smile curving at her lips. “Yeah. I really like you, Debbie. I have for a while now, maybe even since Halloween. If you came to the party, I was going to tell you, and if you didn’t, I was going to… get over it – if that wasn’t what you wanted. But then I was thinking, you know, maybe I wasn’t clear enough when I said I wanted you to come, and I didn’t want to go into the New Year without knowing for sure if you feel anything for me, so… Do you?”

Debbie opens her mouth and every word feels like it’s sticking in her mouth, hard to get out into the open. She’s not used to this – to questions like Tammy’s, to  _ people _ like Tammy. Putting words to how she feels is difficult, sometimes nearly impossible. “Yes,” she lets out after a long moment. “I… yes. I feel – I like you, too. I didn’t know if you…” Mid-sentence, the words seem to run out altogether. She trails off, hoping that Tammy understands what she means.

“Debbie,” she says, hushed, almost a whisper. Lifting her wrist to check her watch again, Tammy glances down to its face and back up again. “Could I kiss you? In forty seconds?”

Time doesn’t feel like something comprehensible, but Debbie nods. Everything moves slowly: Her lungs expanding to hold her breath, Tammy reaching out for her hands. Distantly, all the neighbours packed in the house on the corner begin to count down from thirty, gaining volume every five seconds or so. When they get down to  _ Happy New Year, _ someone a few streets over lights fireworks from the backyard, and in the colours cast over them, Tammy frames Debbie’s cheeks with both palms and kisses her.

Hands moving to press at Tammy’s hips, her waist, Debbie kisses her back, just like the hand-holding at Christmas – soft and hesitant and careful, trying to memorize the feeling of it. The way her lips feel, smooth and warm, and the light champagne on her tongue and the mostly-forgotten wine on Debbie’s, and how when Tammy pulls back, the fireworks reflect in her eyes. “Happy New Year, Debbie,” she murmurs, and Debbie curls her fingers under Tammy’s chin and tilts her face just slightly upward to kiss her again.

Maybe new beginnings aren’t quite as overrated as she thought.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos make me happy! just if you have a moment for that. you can also subscribe to me as an author if you'd like to be notified whenever i post something new, because there are lots of other debtam things coming... slowly, but surely. if you want, you can also follow me on twitter – @deboceans – where i do post convenient links for new projects!
> 
> thank you for reading, and happy holidays!


End file.
